Just a thought

How much will I miss my parents when I'm 86? My grandparents never talk about their parents, but I know they  think about them. How much, I wonder?

Till the Summer Came

Till the Summer Came

Check out the new EP in its entirety here. =)

Non Believer (feat. Eric Heitmann on Keys)

New Song!

For those who don't know, I'm a musician. Above is a link to my new tune, hope you enjoy it.

Voting

Okay, so I like voting. I think it's a good thing to do. Researching the platforms and the candidates and following the political process is something I do regularly, and will continue to do so. My political opinions are fairly moderate, and I have a decent amount to say about any policy that might be implemented, and I'd like to see that reflected back in the candidates I'm voting for. I think that important, and I think it's important that if I do vote, it's because my vote represents my real voice in a democratic society.

This is why I don't do any strategic voting, but it's also why I don't always vote. I realize there's a lot of people who don't vote because they don't care or are lazy, but I'm not talking about them quite as much here. I've been in some fierce discussions following the recent Alberta election about the old cliche, "If you don't vote you have no right to complain." The reasons I have for not voting are the same reasons that I have for voting: to have my message represented in the democratic process. In this case, the message is: my opinion is not represented in the choice of candidates. Whether or not I go out to the polls and spoil the ballot is a problem for analysts, not democracy.

Voter turnout this time around was hovering just over %50, which isn't bad considering the same party has had a monopoly on the government for 43 years, but if you're one of the unfortunate people who didn't vote, you'll get plenty of bullshit for having not done so. You'll get things like, "Why don't you just shut the fuck up!" "If you didn't care enough to vote, you're not allowed to care about anything the government does" and "Your opinion isn't as valid as the ones of the voters." There are a great deal of misconceptions about why people don't vote, I don't think the prejudice is always accurate.

To this point, I've made it fairly clear that I believe not voting is as valid a message as voting if done so deliberately. So why is it that I have no right to complain? I sent my message to the system (and based on how low voter turnout is discussed on local news media, it seems that message has been delivered), and now the democratic process can continue. Is my input worth nothing if I have something to say? Is only %50 of the population allowed to express distaste with their government? Doesn't sound like the point of a free vote to me.

The freedom to vote is very important, but any time you have a freedom, you also have the freedom to abstain. Freedom of religion means the freedom from it; freedom of expression means the freedom not to express; freedom of association means you don't have to associate with anybody if you don't wish to; the freedom to wave a flag is also the freedom to burn it in protest.

Now, like I said, voting is a great idea, and more often than not I will vote, because I typically have some of my ideas represented fairly well. But I think it's okay to be on the fence. Why not? What if you really like two leading parties and just have trouble choosing? What if you really identify with a certain party but there's no candidate in your riding? There's plenty of variables that make voting a difficult thing to do. There's other ways to engage in the democratic process if you don't fit under the umbrella of a party platform. You can champion specific causes, you can run for office yourself, and yes, you can complain. Complain about the choices in candidates and how you don't like the shape of the system -- nothing wrong with that at all. Voting for a party you didn't identify with, for whatever reason, shouldn't be an automatic license to bitch, and not voting shouldn't be an automatic conviction to shut up and stay out of politics.

If I say any more I'll probably go around in circles. Suffice to say that I think %100 of all citizens deserve their right to voice their criticisms about government at any time, no matter how they voted, if at all. And to quote Christopher Hitchens, "anyone who doesn't agree can take a number, get on line, and kiss my ass." How I wish I had an English accent.

Baggage Claims

I recently submitted a reply to the National Post's "Do you believe in a god?" question (LINK)

My reply is somewhere near the bottom in the online extras. After reading everyone else's replies, and a few of the comments (I wouldn't want to read too many of those, as they are usually a waste of time), I noticed a common theme. When people of faith talk about atheism, it usually a straw man argument. People have an assumption of what an atheist believes (whether it's accurate or not) and then they attack their own assumption.

Now, it seems to me that if you disagree with someone's position, then it's a damn good idea to understand that position as accurately as possible. Here are a few examples from the link above:

 The photo of the bus ad “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE) should include atheism on its list.
ECREE is a nice slogan and rhetorical device (as well as an intended conversation stopper).  It is also mere assertion.  On that level it is no better or worse than any religiously based assertion.  But the atheist  has his own problem with regard to extraordinary claims.  First, regarding
the universe, he must claim that the universe came into being from nothing and by
nothing, which would violate a basic metaphysical principle that something
cannot come from nothing.

First of all, atheism has nothing to do with the origin of the universe. Atheism is simply a statement of non belief. Many atheists do hold that the universe came into being from nothing, that's true.  However, assigning it as a required belief of atheists and attacking it as a positive claim is not a valid argument. The only thing that all atheists agree on is that we don't believe a god exists. That's all! And it can be for a good reason or a bad reason, but the reasons we employ are separate from that. I don't believe in a god largely because the assumption would not be scientific. That makes me a scientific skeptic and an atheist, but those are not interchangeable terms. ECREE also implies no assertion, as it's a claim in direct contradiction to assertion, but I digress.

Those who insist on intellectual proof that God exists have a comically high regard for themselves. They wouldn’t dream of trying to explain to their cat how the kitchen toaster works, but expect the human brain to understand how the cosmos was created.

 Atheists do not insist on intellectual proof that god exists. We simply don't believe the claim that one does. This post assumes that us arrogant atheists think we have the capacity to know everything, and that's simply untrue. Sure, many people are arrogant pricks, but the arrogant prick philosophy is not necessarily a part of atheism.

I’m with G.K. Chesterton: “If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”

 This one's always fun. In fact, we can just replace the words and the term "atheists" with its definition and see just how ridiculous this statement is:

• If there were no God, there would be no people that don't believe in God.
• If there were no unicorns, there would be no people that don't believe in unicorns
• If the Earth were not flat, there would be no people that don't believe the Earth is flat

That's enough of that. Next!

 If there was no belief in religion in our lives, we won’t have chance to think about sins and deeds. When we believe in God, it is a way to feel how we meet our goals. In Islam we believe that God is our Creator. The reason why I believe in higher power because there is a reason why we live. When wrong things happen, we weep about our failure. We should remember that happens is for a reason.

 This assumes that atheists, because we have no religion, never consider their moral acts and cannot feel satisfied with our accomplishments. In short, that there is no meaning in our lives. This is probably one of the most damaging misconceptions about atheists. It ought to go without saying that being an atheist has nothing to do with morality (it's simply a statement of non belief in a deity), but to say we hold no morals would be a gross misunderstanding. It's a heavy piece of baggage to carry around as an atheist, because it's often quite hard to explain to others that we can have morality without authority. I'd elaborate, but I'll save that for another post.

I believe in God for two reasons. First, no monkey pounding away at a typewriter would ever turn out a literate text. Thinking that the universe created itself is like thinking Shakespeare’s works could be created by that monkey. Second, the one factor common to all successful societies, and which all unsuccessful societies lack, is a brush with Christianity.

 Atheism has nothing to do with evolution or the creation of the universe. Got that? With regards to the claim itself of monkeys and typewriters, that's not how evolution works at all. This commenter is a perfect illustration of a straw man argument. Disagreeing with someone's position without knowing the position's details is bold faced ignorance. As for his second statement, he's factually wrong, but in the instances where he is right, the only reason why the societies were unsuccessful was because they were wiped off the face of the earth by Christian crusaders. I guess that's one way to have a successful society: conquest!

I believe in God. It is a conscious decision, an act of faith. Why would I choose to live my life ignoring God’s grace and love? Being an agnostic might seem the most rational choice, but why choose angst or indecision? I look at the beauty and complexity of all living creatures and think it would take enormous faith in one’s self to say: God does not exist.

 No self respecting atheist I've ever known has stated certainty when it comes to god's existence, nor did they pair their non belief with angst and indecision. The claim that you need faith to say god does not exist, is a true one. You do need faith for that. But it's not atheism. And what atheists have to say about the god claim is exactly the opposite of faith.

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here. Everyone seems to agree that atheists are wrong because of the positions they don't hold. The best I can do is be open about this stuff. Perhaps once believers get over the fact that they just might have something in common with their heathen peers, some progress can be made in our understanding of one another, and maybe just maybe, the world could be a tiny bit better of a place.

Scientific Method : A Reply

I received an interesting reply to a comment I made on the next to the last blog post, and I thought I'd post my reply here.

{Originally posted by Anonymous}
The problem I have with this argument is that you place "science" on a pillar higher than a persons experience. The problem is that science as far as I understand is just people making observations. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems that if I were to call myself a scientist my documented opinion would be respected more.

I think your definition of what science is and does may be part of the problem.

Science is not just people making observations, although that is the first part of it. An observation is made about some phenomenon, and a hypothesis is generated. An example of such a hypothesis would be "acupuncture is effective in relieving pain."

Once generated, an experiment can be designed in order to test it. The testing is the largest part of what science does, and without it we could gather no relevant information. An example of such testing would be, using the earlier example, testing the effects of acupuncture in comparison with the effects of conventional medicine and the effects of no treatment at all. Using placebo controls (sham acupuncture) and a double blind procedure (both the subjects and the experimenters are made unaware of the details of a study in order to avoid bias), once could make a reasonable conclusion based on the results.

After this study is published, another step must be taken, and that's peer review & replication. Not every scientific study is a good one, and as many people have pointed out for different reasons, "Science" is not always right. Studies get published, and in order to validate the results of those studies, they must be done again by a third party using the same testing parameters. If the results are similar, we can be reasonably certain that the results are true. This step of science is happening all the time, and new technologies and theories are being developed all the time based on the results of such studies.

There's a lot more detail to the process of science than I've layed out here, and I may have missed some important things, but this is just to show that the image of the scientist in his white lab coat giving out his opinion from an ivory tower and expecting that opinion to be taken without question is not a valid image of what science is.

As far as personal experience goes, it's a very simple process. I experience something, then interpret what it is based on the available information that I'm familiar with. Now, I could be wrong, but since it's just a personal experience, there's really no system in place to test whether or not my experience was real. I misinterpret reality ALL the time, and I'll bet you do too. The other day I thought I saw something out the corner of my eye, and I turned my head and it was gone. A small hallucination, but a real one. When I was a kid I could have sworn I heard sleigh bells on Christmas Eve, but it was just wishful thinking.

When our brains lie to us, we often have to rely on other people's experience and expertise in order to guide ourselves though our misconceptions. And really, that's all it is to trust the consensus of science.

Homofemivegenvironazis

I've been reading a lot about feminism recently from multiple sources. For a long time, I did not like the feminist movement, or any other movement that represented one demographic over another (Gay rights, feminism, environmentalism, political activism of all sorts, Occupy, vegetarianism and its derivatives, etc.) In short, I suppose I didn't like activism in general.

The first step in understanding the most rational parts of these movements, for me, came from (of course) the atheist visibility movement. For a long time, I used to feel kind of rejected because of my position on religion, and I never explored why until later in life. I kind of felt selfish because I knew how lucky I was to be a relatively well off person in a good society, and how it could very easily have been much worse for me. I didn't realize that yes, atheists are indeed persecuted by the majority in most places, and that it is cause for alarm. Getting involved in the movement of helping atheists to be more accepted in society was a big step because it made me aware not only of how legitimate my own struggle was, but how much more legitimate other people's struggles were.

After going through my experience, and after having met several other people who were going through different struggles, it made me realize what privileges I had that I took for granted (I am a heterosexual white male from a middle class household with two living parents with the opportunity to pursue my dreams) and made me appreciate them. The struggles other people had made a lot more sense, and I can now understand why things are taken to extremes.

Here's an example: I eat meat. I love it. And I used to LOVE to tease vegetarians. I liked the idea of ordering veal in their presence just to piss them off. Why? The perception: Vegetarians/Vegans are a bunch of self righteous pricks that are all high on themselves and want to dictate the morality of other people in order to claim moral superiority. What have I realized?

THIS IS NOT TRUE!!!

Of course there are some vegetarians and vegans who are really in your face about how much they hate that you eat meat, but to focus on their intensity does not necessarily devalue their central moral question: Is it right to eat meat? Do you know the answer to this question? I really, really don't.

I suspect that there are a lot of people that disagree with feminism because of these same kinds of arguments. The perception: Feminists are a bunch of anti-male self righteous cunts that are all high on themselves and want to dictate the morality of men in order to claim moral superiority. Aaaaand...

THIS IS NOT TRUE!!!

Feminists, in my experience, have been the best people I can imagine. Generally and specifically speaking, the feminists I have known respect equal rights, honesty, compassion and reason. Without fail, anyone I know that has fought for the cause of feminism has been in it for all the good reasons. I've observed one comedian who asserts female superiority over men (Susie Essman) that I don't particularly like, but comedy gets a few passes when it comes to these sorts of things.

I realized fairly recently, given all the exposure that I've had to feminism, that my attitude towards vegetarians was not that different than my attitude towards feminists. I was arguing against a straw man the whole time. I realized that I dislike the idea of women hating on men, I dislike the idea of vegetarians hating meat-eaters, I dislike the idea of liberals hating conservatives, and I dislike the idea of atheists hating theists, and vice versa on all of that.

What I really want is for ideas to be discussed. Open minded ideas that embrace the love that all human beings that care have for each other. Perhaps that's too utopian for reality to deal with, but it's absolutely my utopia.

Problems with Analogies

Whenever I get into a discussion or argument about the existence of god, I don't usually like to bother with a whole lot of analogies. I think, more than anything else, it misses the big picture about what religion means to people.

One of the main problems theists have with atheists is that many theists believe that they have a personal relationship with their god, and use their holy texts to fulfill a philosophical and spiritual meaning in their lives. It takes a lot to help someone realize that there is another way we can assign meaning in our lives, and one thing that doesn't help is to make religious beliefs sound personally cheap.

For example, Richard Dawkins, whom I generally like, likes to make the analogy that belief in a god is fundamentally no different than believing in unicorns or fairies, as we have equal evidence for all of these things (which is to say no evidence at all). While Professor Dawkins' argument is fairly sound, what does this argument to someone who filters the meaning in their lives through their religion? Well, it pisses them off, that's what! A good analogy doesn't necessarily have to be effective in order to be true, but it does have to be true to be effective. At least Richard got half of it right. Atheists are not the only ones who use analogies to try and stump the competition and ridicule the opposition, but the ones I respect tend to at least be careful about the logic.

The thing I don't like about these analogies is not that they serve to ridicule the opposition, as I think ridicule is an effective weapon against ridiculous beliefs. No, the thing I don't like about them is that it places the believer in a position of ridicule next to the atheist position, which is placed in a position of sensibility. It's a "Ha ha I'm better than you" argument, which never works.

 I don't think ridicule works in analogy. It can certainly work as a direct approach: Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...(taken from reddit as the first google response to the search term "zombie jew") 

Humour and ridicule can sometimes address legitimate criticisms of a belief without having to compare it to what's being argued against. I know that when I came to the realization that I was an atheist, I had to convince myself more than anyone had to convince me. I think it takes a certain type of person to be able to respond positively to an analogy that ridicules them, a certain kind of open-mindedness. Being that many believers that will have the conversation are indeed closed minded, it may be better to approach that situation from a different angle.

Routine

I'm attempting to reevaluate how I construct my plans.

Before, I would use vague goals with essentially no consequences, so you can see how that might not work so well. It's an admittedly lazy and stupid way to approach life, and it wastes a lot of time. I would often fall back into simple routines, ones that guaranteed a consistently pleasurable, if a bit boring existence. While this routine has bogged me down in many negative ways, I think it's important for me to recognize my reliance on them, and turn routines into something good.

Rather than do something complicated like schedule every minute of my life, I'm going to try and build on what I've already established. Since routines are how I tend to construct my life whether I realize them or not, I'm going to categorize them into good routines (waking up on time, brushing teeth, having breakfast) and bad routines (wasting time on facebook, video games and tv before accomplishing anything important).

This approach, to many, probably looks like the kind of approach that will lead one to be a workaholic, but for me, having lapsed into a social and professional stagnation requires that I focus my attention away from my own greedy habits and be more conscious of what I'll regret in the future if I don't take action today.

How I determine a good routine and a bad routine is dependent on not just the results, but how worthy the journey through each task is. For example, playing video games provides a pleasurable journey, but offers no measurable real world achievements, and buying a house offers a great achievement, but comes at a price too great to consider. This kind of thinking ought to be pretty much obvious, but it amazes me how often it eludes people, including myself. Bad decisions are made every day by those that ought to know better, and sometimes it helps just to write down what makes sense, reminding us of just how illogical we can be.

Prioritizing my goals like this will hopefully give me better insight into the things I really would like to accomplish. Life has gotten too simple and too easy -- time to mix things up a bit, but keeping everything in the structure of routines will hopefully make the change seem less radical than it is.

A Question for my Theist Friends

A common thing I see in my daily news feed is something like this:

"[insert good things about one's day or life here]. God is good!"

What -- in as much detail as possible -- do you mean?